


three doors, three souls

by AvinRyd



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Afterlife, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Moving On, PTSD, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24070210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvinRyd/pseuds/AvinRyd
Summary: “B-” He clears his throat. “Bartimaeus?”(He's not sure where that name came from.)The boy blinks, then shakes his head. “No, my name is Ptolemy.” He looks expectant, as if waiting for a response.And what to respond? Does he have a name? After a moment of thought he decides, yes, he does have a name: Nathaniel. He says as much and Ptolemy smiles.“Hello, Nathaniel,” and it sounds so right and familiar in his voice that Nathaniel aches.
Relationships: Bartimaeus & Nathaniel (Bartimaeus), Kitty Jones & Nathaniel, Kitty Jones & Ptolemy, Nathaniel & Ptolemy (Bartimaeus), Nathaniel (Bartimaeus) & Kitty Jones & Bartimaeus & Ptolemy (Bartimaeus)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 57





	three doors, three souls

White.

Blinding white is all there is; there had been shards of it in his vision, slashes of it in his body, an aching starburst of it in his soul. Now it is all he knows. He flies through it at speed, movement with no form to move; burning on skin that is not there.

Then suddenly, everything stops.

He looks around to see the white has dulled from snow-in-blazing-sunlight to something with depth, dimension. The dimension seems to go on forever, stretching away, and in that distance there is a speck of...well, it’s hard to tell. Certainly not white, which he finds comforting. 

Sensing something at his back, he turns. Swinging shut behind him in calm silence is a massive door. Its glass panes gleam in the omnipresent light, iron latticework shining dully between. There is nothing behind the glass.

Movement at his back, once again. Once again, he turns. The not-white speck has drawn very close indeed, close enough to take the form of a boy; dark of skin, dark of hair, with eyes that feel older than the years his face betrays. The child can’t be more than fourteen.

“B-” He clears his throat. “Bartimaeus?”

(He's not sure where that name came from.)

The boy blinks, then shakes his head. “No, my name is Ptolemy.” He looks expectant, as if waiting for a response.

And what to respond? Does he have a name? After a moment of thought he decides, yes, he does have a name: _Nathaniel_. He says as much and Ptolemy smiles.

“Hello, Nathaniel,” and it sounds so right and familiar in his voice that Nathaniel aches.

“Where are we?” Nathaniel asks, looking around once more, but Ptolemy doesn’t answer. Instead—still with that smile, warm as the sun and twice as bright—he reaches out to take Nathaniel’s hand and lead him forward.

Hand. Nathaniel then remembers to wonder about his own form. Does _he_ look like anything in particular? He starts with the hand in Ptolemy’s: pasty pale in comparison, but around the same size. From the wrist there’s a spindly arm in the sleeve of a grey jumper. This leads to a torso occupying the rest of the jumper. Down over dark pants to smart shoes, and Nathaniel compares these to Ptolemy’s ivory kilt and bare brown feet. Looking up, he’s at eye-level with the back of Ptolemy’s head and there’s a dark fringe of hair falling into his vision that surely wasn’t there before. He’s just reaching up to fuss with it when Ptolemy draws to a stop.

“What do you see?”

Nathaniel snaps back to attention and lets out a small sound of surprise. “Um. I see three doors,” he says with some confusion, “The door on the left is dark wood with a tarnished silver handle. The middle one is dark and has a red pentacle drawn on it, but the outer binding is broken. The door on the right is plain. Just a white door. ”

Ptolemy nods and points with his free hand at the first door. “That leads back to the world you know. Step through and you can start anew with no memory of this or your life before.”

He points to the second. “That door leads to the Other Place. If you enter, you will be absorbed into the energies of that world and become a part of the spirits. One day, you might be named and summoned. Or you might not.

"The third-” he pauses and gives the plain door a hard look, “The third door leads...on. I don’t know where, for I’ve never seen what’s beyond.”

There’s a long pause, then Ptolemy turns to face Nathaniel and says with heartbreaking gentleness, “As you’ve probably worked out, you’re dead.”

Their empty pocket of space is quiet as Nathaniel considers this, then he gestures around them. His voice seems small and fragile in the excess of open space. “And where is this?”

“Purgatory. Mictlan. Hades. There are many names. I call it The In-Between.” Ptolemy shrugs and seems like he would continue, but something draws his attention back the way they’d come.

The glass-and-iron door has opened once more and _something_ falls through. To Nathaniel it has no shape, only a lump of substance imposed on the world, but somehow his entire being shrinks from it in terror. Ptolemy goes to meet it, but Nathaniel shies away and removes himself from the doors. From this vantage he can’t hear Ptolemy’s words, but he sees the other boy reach out and the essence take form under his touch. 

A horrifying apparition is soon standing more than twice as tall as Ptolemy, tentacles and horns and sickly shapes of too many limbs and a roar of abject misery. Ptolemy shows absolutely no fear, no disgust; his movements are gentle and sure, meeting the confused and desolate creature with a compassion Nathaniel knows he could not muster in himself.

They approach the doors and Nathaniel can hear Ptolemy now. His quiet question is the same but the _thing’s_ voice, with its echoes of horror and undercurrent of shrieking cries, is too vague to make out. As soon as Ptolemy has explained the third door, the being moves towards it in a desperate lurch. The door is open now and Nathaniel leans forward, trying to see beyond and the thing turns; their eyes meet and both recoil in base terror. The thing falls backwards through the door. Nathaniel falls on his backside. The door clicks shut.

For the first time in this place of empty white, Nathaniel feels _pain_. A tension has wound itself in his chest and is tightening viciously; in his ears, there are echoes of mind-rending noise—crashing glass and roaring fire, the screaming and exultation of many beings too large for the world. His breath comes too fast and harsh, though a moment ago he hadn’t needed to breathe at all. 

For a time he cannot measure, Nathaniel is curled up on himself in a ball, rocking back and forth, wanting desperately to forget even as he reaches to understand this horror in his mind. The understanding does not come; the oblivion, neither. When his vision comes back into focus, Ptolemy is kneeling before him, unsurprised concern in the curve of his back and lines on his brow.

“Your passing was violent,” he says, “and though it may have involved that spirit you just saw, you cannot recall a thing. Am I right?”

Nathaniel nods, tries to arrange his limbs into a more comfortable sitting position. Ptolemy continues.

“It is often that way with those who die in battle or fear. So many pass through with no memory of themselves. And some, like me, stay until they recall.” 

Something about Ptolemy’s hand on Nathaniel’s processed wool jumper seems incongruous.

“You can too, if you like.”

~

“I think I had another name.” Nathaniel says into the quiet. Ptolemy has just returned from guiding a wandering woman from the glass door. He flops down to lie on the ground alongside Nathaniel; their heads level, Nathaniel’s feet stick out a bit past Ptolemy’s. “It was John.”

Ptolemy’s hum from his left is musical in its thoughtful way. A hand comes up, darkly contrasted with their white surroundings, and traces invisible circles in the air. “Sounds like you were a magician.”

Nathaniel doesn’t like the sounds of _that_. He’s seen the magicians who pass through the In-Between. He knew first by Ptolemy’s pointing them out; now he knows them by their greedy, grabby hands and sharply paranoid eyes. In a sudden fit of concern, he sits up and examines himself, wishes for a mirror that does not appear. Is he one of those unpleasant souls too?

It’s just as he’s reassured himself that no, he has not suddenly morphed into a grasping, sucking vortex of greed and narcissism, that Nathaniel hears Ptolemy laugh from beside him. _Laugh_. Indignant, Nathaniel turns to find Ptolemy attempting to sit up, but unable to for the giggles that shake his frame.

“What? What’s so funny?”

Ptolemy is still snickering, but has managed to right himself at last. “Nothing! It’s just that, I’m sure I reacted the exact same way when I realized _I_ was a magician. Horror-struck gasp and everything!”

In a huff, Nathaniel turns deliberately away to face the glass door. It’s not until his pique abates that he thinks about what Ptolemy said.

~

There is another person with them in the In-Between, for a time. Confused and disoriented, she stares with wide, overwhelmed eyes at the doors until Ptolemy places a gentle hand on her elbow. He softly repeats the same words he’d offered Nathaniel and, like Nathaniel, she accepts.

Unlike Nathaniel, she ages from the teenager she’d arrived as to an old woman in the span of three new arrivals. Lines and circles—pentacles and runes—have tattooed themselves dark and sharp, then faded into parchment-frail skin by the time the fog lifts from her gaze. Eyes clear and sad and wise, she bids him and Ptolemy farewell before the second door. The ink on her palm matches the broken pentacle sketched on dark wood.

It’s only after she’s fully gone, the door shut silently behind her, that Nathaniel turns to Ptolemy with a serious look. The other boy seems very small, very young, all of a sudden. 

He doesn’t have to say anything; Ptolemy just returns the look with a placid, “Yes. I was fourteen. It took a long time before I remembered even those years, though.”

They are quiet for a span. Then, “Why are you still here?”

“I'm waiting for someone.” Another pause. “Why are you?”

“I—” Nathaniel has to think about it. “At first, I stayed because making such a big decision on so little knowledge seemed like a bad idea, but now… I think I’m waiting for someone too.”

“Do you remember their name?”

Frustrated, Nathaniel shakes his head. Ptolemy gives a gentle smile.

“I’m not surprised; Rekyt’s name was the last thing I remembered.”

“Why, do you think?”

“Probably because it was the most important.”

~

“What do _you_ see?”

Nathaniel asks this to shake Ptolemy out of one of his sullen, contemplative moods. He gets like this sometimes, in long spans between arrivals. The doors invoke a frustrated silence and so he sits, cross-legged, and _stares._

He breaks the stare at Nathaniel’s question.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Who else is there?”

Nathaniel plops down next to his friend, pushing the irritatingly long hair from his face to better watch Ptolemy’s expression. Brows drawn down over dark eyes relax out of their frown, slowly. He points to the leftmost door.

“That one looks like the city gates. Alexandria’s gates, I mean. I never got to see the world through them.”

The finger shifts right.

“That one is as I once saw it, the four elemental gates between our world and the Other Place. It tempts me, I must admit.” He stops for a moment, sighs. “Rekyt might be through there. But then, I would not be myself enough to remember him. I couldn’t bear that.”

Ptolemy is quiet for a long time. Question after question pushes at Nathaniel’s tight-closed lips while the other boy practically glares at the third door.

“ _That_ one,” he finally says, “looks like the doors in Alexandria’s library. So much knowledge behind a door I cannot yet unlock. It galls me, Nathaniel. I want to know what’s beyond—I _need_ to know.”

They sit and look together for a while. Then Nathaniel asks, tentatively,

“Do you think he’ll want to go with you? When he does get here?”

Ptolemy’s shrug is almost desolate.

“I don’t know. But I’m not sure I could go without him. We were meant to explore the worlds together you know, before I had to go and ruin it all by dying.” 

This is more grim than either boy usually allows the conversation to turn. Seeming to sense this, Ptolemy shifts his ever-burning curiosity from its current, frustrated subject to Nathaniel.

“What about you? Have your doors changed? Some people’s do, you know.”

Nathaniel shakes his head and rises to examine the doors more closely. His fingers brush the silver handle of the left door.

“No, they’re the same. But I think more familiar, now. This door was one I went through often. Maybe for work? This one—”

The center door pulls him up short.

“I’m afraid of it. When I was very young, I think it was something horrible. But the pentacle is wrong for that memory.”

Ptolemy nods, pensive.

“What you described sounds like something I worked on, in life. A broken pentacle to let your spirit flow to the Other Place.” Then he brightens considerably. “Maybe you read my book! I left all the appropriate notes; maybe someone—maybe Rekyt—finished it!”

“It’s possible. I certainly recognize _you_. Maybe there was a picture of you in it. Always in my mind, I see your shadow and… And…”

Nathaniel feels his existence flicker and suddenly his eyes are nearly of a height with the pentacle on the center door. The long hair is gone, now cropped short against his head.

“Kitty!”

Her sheer presence in his mind bowls him over, knocks him flat—just as that punch had, when they were so young. Her memory alone takes his breath away, is light incarnate, but there’s a certain quality about light:

The brighter the glow, the more the shadows stand out

~

Nathaniel is the one taken to brooding by the doors, now. Maybe talking about his fears had eased Ptolemy’s frustration, for he is calmer in the silence. Nathaniel, though, stares at the doors and fights with his mind.

Dimly, he finds this sensation familiar. _In life_ , he thinks, _I often fought with myself like this. Forcing my mind to do my bidding. If only it worked_ now _._

Shadowy thoughts and feelings swirl around two points. Kitty’s bright aura lights some of them with its shining glow, but the black hole with Ptolemy’s silhouette darkens all that come near. Why can’t he _remember?_

One thing he can remember whirls ‘round and ‘round his head whenever he looks at the center door: 

_Demons are wicked and will hurt you if they can. Demons are wicked and will hurt you if they can. Demons are wicked and will hurt you if th—_

Incessantly it repeats until Nathaniel has to flee. 

Last time, he’d turned from the doors and from Ptolemy and stalked off into the empty vastness. This had gone about as well as could be expected. The blank expanse of white stretched forever, but the doors never got any further away, no matter how far he walked.

This time, he deliberately paces from the three doors to the distant single one. It is the same as ever, all shining glass and dull iron. 

(For all the glass shines, it never shows what’s behind.)

He’s still there, forcing his breathing to calm—he only ever _needs_ to breathe when the fear gets like this—when the glass door swings and he’s bathed in brilliant light.

At Ptolemy's suggestion, Nathaniel has accompanied the other boy in his guidance of many new passers through the In-Between. The ritual is always the same. No one has ever tried to call Ptolemy by any name, even the wrong one like Nathaniel did, so Ptolemy gives it freely. The arrival gives theirs in return, then manifests from an amorphous collection of matter into their truest form under his touch.

This is nothing like that. In fact, it’s the exact opposite.

The soul before him is an awesome collection of light, the likes of which Nathaniel has never seen in his time here. He actually stumbles backwards, so fierce is the glow. Before Ptolemy has even approached, Nathaniel finds himself addressed by the new arrival.

“Nathaniel?”

And the shining presence is so _familiar_. He reaches out, almost afraid, and finds his fingertips pressed to those of an old woman. Her blistering aura collapses itself into a body much shorter than his own, much older, with an expression on her face so blindingly nostalgic he forgets to step back before she launches at him.

“Nathaniel, you absolute prat!”

He raises his arms to fend her off with a yelp of, “Kitty, wait! I don’t—”

But the protest dies in his throat when he realizes she’s dragged him into a tight hug. 

The contact is novel; as a rule, he and Ptolemy don’t touch. It seems like an odd thing to even want in this place, where bodies are obviously a construct of their own minds. Nathaniel doesn’t remember having any affectionate physicality in his life on earth, either—having or _wanting—_ but this shakes something loose in him. 

His lifted arms come up to return the embrace, and for a moment he’s holding not an old woman, but a girl barely his senior—silver tresses interspersed liberally with glossy black where her head tucks under his chin. The moment ends, but the strength of her hold does not, and they don’t part until a polite cough sounds from behind them.

A deep-seated, gentlemanly instinct sparks in Nathaniel and he turns, hand at Kitty’s back, to face Ptolemy.

“Kitty, this is—”

“Ptolemy!”

The boys’ reactions are simultaneous—Nathaniel’s a put-out frown, Ptolemy’s a confused tilt of the head—when Kitty steps forward to place marveling hands on Ptolemy’s thin shoulders.

“I always knew he was a stickler for accuracy, but to see you in person... After everything Bartimaeus told me, it’s so wonderful to meet you!”

Before she can continue, Ptolemy holds up a hand.

“Wait. Before we talk properly, and we _most certainly_ need to, I need to tell you a few things about this place.” He glances quickly at Nathaniel, then back to Kitty. “Come with me, this won’t take long.”

Holding her hand, Ptolemy leads Kitty towards the three doors and Nathaniel doesn’t follow. This is a personal revelation, deeply intimate and best only shared with one other person—definitely not to be shared with a boy who only mostly-remembers you. 

Nathaniel stays behind and the name Kitty mentioned eats at him in the quiet. He’d said it too, when he first arrived: _Bartimaeus_. 

Other names have no business in front of this first door—the dispassionate portal of glass and iron seeks only the name of the arrival and that of the guide. So who is this Bartimaeus, to be so important to not one, but _two_ people’s afterlives?

Rather more to the point, why is one so important such a black hole in Nathaniel’s memory?

~

Ptolemy and Kitty haven’t come up for air once since Kitty arrived—Nathaniel leaves them to it. He is obviously missing a key piece of the puzzle the three of them make up and Ptolemy has gone so long without a confidant like Kitty. Nathaniel can’t begrudge him that.

He picks up Ptolemy’s duties fully. On first arriving, he’d been convinced this was a job he could never do; that Ptolemy’s ability to look past the strange and horrifying manifestations was fully unique. He was wrong. With the strict discipline he’s remembering was a hallmark of his life, Nathaniel firmly sets aside the gut-deep twist in his soul whenever a spirit manifests under his offered hand, and he guides them all on.

It gets easier. As different as each soul is, one from the next, Nathaniel finds it interesting to wonder what about each individual creates their form. A name is a catalyst; for some it seems to bind and chafe, for others it brings form and purpose. With all of them, though, it is not the name itself that seems to determine their form, and he _marvels_.

He is not Ptolemy; his manner is not the golden, shining, unconditional glow of the other boy’s. The best Nathaniel can give, the best he hopes to bring, is the truth of his empathy.

None of his arrivals choose to stay, and Nathaniel can’t decide if he’s grateful or envious. Grateful, because whatever he and Kitty and Ptolemy have, he doesn’t want to try and figure it out with a stranger hanging about. Envious, because _what he wouldn’t give_ for that kind of conviction in choice.

The idea of choice consumes his thoughts. The hours before his death are still lost to him, but Nathaniel can feel a _weight_ looming over them—a choice a lifetime in the making, bearing down on the end of that life. He knows himself, now. He knows the Nathaniel-before-death would never have made a choice like that unless— unless…?

Unless someone had shown him how.

Except, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how deep he delves, the only teacher he’s known in that regard is _Ptolemy_ —but not just Ptolemy here, in the In-Between. 

Strange, intrusive memories now plague him constantly. London is burning, demons are exulting, and the spices of Alexandria’s markets burn in his nose? 

He is alone; he is one with another. He is carrying someone; he is _being carried_ , a passenger borne along by a presence inside of himself.

One moment, Pestilential tears burn into his vision—the next he’s squinting through a lion’s mane, tangled around his face and needing to be spit from his mouth. 

Against Ptolemy’s advice, Kitty eventually approaches. She’s got that blazing look in her eyes, the one that captivated and terrified him so in life—the one that means she’s about to fix the world or die trying. He waves her off.

“But Nathaniel—”

“No, Kitty. I’ve seen what happens when someone is forced through this. It’s not a sight I wish on you.”

Nor anyone. 

They are stubbornly locked like that for long minutes. Meeting her glare-for-glare feels so achingly familiar, and yet so foreign because that’s the _wrong soul_ behind the right eyes. Frustrated beyond measure, Nathaniel tears himself away and scrubs a hand through his military-short hair.

How dare this Bartimaeus? How dare they take the best of his life _and_ the peace of his afterlife—take them and twine them up in confusing, inaccessible memory? 

The glass and iron door creaks. Nathaniel generally makes an effort to project calm when he approaches the arrivals, and he makes the effort now. Only, it’s not working. A scowl still draws his brows in as the great door swings open, and it only starts to fade at the sight of the ragged, bedraggled essence that tumbles through.

Nathaniel has seen spirits like this before, stretched thin and weary. Many spirits he’s guided have immediately chosen the second door. This kind, though? These are the least threatening, and they _always_ choose the third door.

~

_(he always imagines their trailing rags of essence twining into braid-y patterns, like cables on a cardigan)_

~

Even with his ire simmering so close beneath the surface, Nathaniel crouches just a bit to reach out a hand to this newcomer. He doesn’t know what he expects—never knows exactly what to expect—but suddenly images flash in his mind before the spirit takes form.

~

_(frail and gasping, a frog pooling iridescent fluid over marble tile)_

_(the weakest whirl of sulfurous smoke, dim yellowed eyes peering out)_

_(a slime-composed pyramid, edges barely defined and smelling distinctly of fish chowder)_

~

He reaches out.

~

They do not touch, exactly. They are apart, and then, all of a sudden, they are not.

Nathaniel has not had a body in an immeasurable amount of time, but suddenly he remembers the feel of it—remembers the wonder of another experiencing it as a structure of delicate construction—remembers the rush of exhilaration even as that rush fills him anew.

It rushes out of him just as quickly, a sandstorm of iridescent intent stealing out of him on a breath he hadn’t remembered holding. No longer connected, he and the spirit face one another as it takes form at last under his hand.

_(His hand has blisters now, never allowed to scar over.)_

Both a whirling vortex of night-sky-stars and a glowing conflagration, the spirit materializes—the melancholy of the mutilated Other Place, ripped off and alone, melded with a blinding love of the human soul. It is a humanoid silhouette, Nathaniel’s height and build, with a familiar outline of curly, Macedonian hair, and an aura around darkness that’s bright as noonday splendour. 

“And to think, I thought you would be the last thing I saw _before_ dying. Beats me how you managed to be the first thing after the fact.”

_(It doesn’t echo in his head-heart-soul like before, but the voice rocks Nathaniel to his core anyway.)_

Nathaniel laughs—right and sure and fully _himself_ at last, he laughs. He laughs, and then he replies,

“As if I’d ever let you have the last word, Bartimaeus.”

~

Kitty appears beside Nathaniel, an amused grin quirking her lined face as she eyes Bartimaeus.

“You’ve changed. I’m surprised we all actually made it here, since you seem to absorb all of our best traits into yourself as soon as we die.”

If any features were readily available, Bartimaeus would be rolling his eyes. As it is, he steps forward to ruffle Kitty’s silver hair in a familiar manner. In that moment they are three—a solid, stable shape—bound together by a love that none of them could have reached on their own; a love that originated not of them, but outside of them. 

That love thrums, an invisibly golden light pulsing with a tension multiple eternities old. Kitty and Nathaniel glance at each other, nod, then step out and away as one. 

In the opening they make stands Ptolemy—small, somehow shy and looking suddenly different. All his ageless wisdom has fallen away and brown hands grip the white linen of his kilt. His scholar’s pallor has deepened to a wan, sickly thing and he’s shaking on unsteady legs. His swallow before he speaks is both visible and audible; he has to struggle past it before croaking,

“Hello, Rekyt.” 

Bartimaeus says nothing. He doesn’t say a thing, but steps forward with purpose, two long strides carrying him forward—carrying him close enough to kneel before the boy and pull him by the shoulders into a tight embrace. _Then_ he says something, murmurs it into the dark curls above Ptolemy’s ear, but it’s too soft for Nathaniel and Kitty to catch. As is right—it wasn’t theirs to hear.

For his part, Ptolemy is definitely crying. His face is buried in Bartimaeus’s shoulder and he’s shaking like a leaf—full-body shudders wracking his frame as his arms tighten their grip. The usually warm-but-slightly-guarded Ptolemy has never been so vulnerable in front of Nathaniel, not even that time in front of the doors, and the older—younger?—boy blushes.

Awkwardly, Nathaniel touches Kitty’s hand and makes to turn them both away, but a voice calls him back. Bartimaeus.

“A couple thousand years in Purgatory hasn’t cured you of your emotional constipation, Nat? Get over here, both of you.”

He still doesn’t move, and Kitty has to physically drag him, pull him down to join their friends—friends, he has _friends_ —in a puddle on the ground. Like time, and physicality and everything else, temperature doesn’t really exist in the In-Between, but Nathaniel is warmer than he can ever remember being in life. It burns like a supernova in his chest.

~

They are all four in front of the doors—Nathaniel next to Kitty next to Ptolemy next to Bartimaeus.

“What do you see, Rekyt?”

A very long pause then, a bit bemused,

“Well, you. All three of you, all in a line just like we are now, but without me. So, a mirror that’s somehow got busted?” 

Nathaniel and Kitty look just as confused as Bartimaeus sounds, but Ptolemy starts to laugh.

“What?”

Ptolemy only laughs harder, managing to get out, 

“Rekyt, you are such a sap!”

“Am not!”

“You are so!”

“Oh yeah?” Bartimaeus crosses his arms, looking supremely offended, “How’s that?”

Ptolemy is still snickering, but has gotten the actual gales of laughter under control. With a valiant attempt at his usual serenity, he points to the left-most door.

“That—”

“Nathaniel,” Bartimaeus supplies promptly.

“—is the _door_ back to the world of humans, of earth and sky and boundaries.” Ptolemy’s finger shifts, “That one—Kitty, right?—leads to the Other Place, and this last one…”

As if the implication has only just caught up to him, Ptolemy pauses, an unreadable expression on his face as his directing finger starts to lower. Nathaniel smoothly picks up the thread.

“The last one leads _on._ No one knows what’s behind it—an adventure into the unknown, you might say. Ptolemy’s right, you _are_ a sap.”

No one speaks for a long, long while; each lost in their own thoughts. Then, Bartimaeus sighs,

“Well, I don’t know about you lot, but I’ve about had it with bouncing between the first two.” A gentle hand on Ptolemy’s shoulder. “What do you say? Should we bring these kids along on our long-postponed adventure?”

It’s as if a weight has been lifted off of the boy. He reaches up, tugs the hand off his shoulder and laces their fingers together. Eyes on the door, he reaches back unseeingly for Kitty’s hand. He finds it offered freely.

In her turn, Kitty reaches for Nathaniel as they step towards the plain, white door, but Nathaniel doesn’t take it. Kitty—dear, stubborn Kitty—digs her heels in and they all look back.

“Nathaniel,” she says, voice brooking no nonsense, “What are you doing?”

Nathaniel glances at the iron-and-glass door, then to the three, then back to his friends. A weight seems to be lifted off of his shoulders as well—a choice finally made.

“I’ll be along.” His smile is serene, scabbed and blistered hands clasped behind his back. “You three go on, it’s not like I don’t know where to find you.”

Kitty does not drop Ptolemy’s hand, but drags the other two back with her as she steps directly in front of Nathaniel, glaring up into his face. Before she can speak, though, Nathaniel continues,

“I know I didn’t exactly keep my last promise—”

“Too right, you didn’t!”

“—but I will, this time. I swear it.”

Tears are bright in Kitty’s eyes, choking up her voice and making her hands shake. Ptolemy squeezes her hand as he steps up beside her.

“He’ll catch us up, Kitty. After all,” the boy shoots Nathaniel a sly grin, “he knows we’ll come looking for him if he doesn’t. If we walk enough worlds, we’ll eventually make it back here to drag him along, if need be.”

His voice has the bite of a threat, but Nathaniel knows Ptolemy now—knows that under his friend’s teasing is approval. There should always be a guide.

Bartimaeus taps Kitty on the shoulder.

“Budge over, you two.”

They do. Bartimaeus steps forward, places hands on Nathaniel’s shoulders, and leans down to press a kiss to the boy’s forehead.

“Don’t be too long.”

Kitty and Ptolemy are suddenly there too, arms wrapped around him in tight hugs. Nathaniel nods, suddenly choked up himself. He remembers this feeling—the last thing he felt before the end. To be loved so much by even one, let alone three... It nearly breaks him.

“I won't, I promise.”

The three draw back. They look at him, long and steady, then Kitty turns first to face the white door. Ptolemy is next, excitement clear in his bearing. Last to turn away is Bartimaeus, lingering to look back at Nathaniel. 

Nathaniel’s expression is soft, not quite a smile.

“Go on. I’ll see you all soon.”

And they do.

The door clicks shut behind them.

Movement at his back, and he turns. The door of glass and iron swings silently open on invisible hinges. Nathaniel walks to meet it—through the flat, quiet whiteness of this dimension. A fall of essence imposes itself upon the space, tumbling through the door. 

With a soft smile, a starburst of white burning in his soul, he says,

“Hello. My name is Nathaniel.”

_fin_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my BartSeq bucket list fic. I am a grownup and have finally processed Nathaniel's death with all the grace and courtesy the situation deserves. 13 years later. I'm a sobbing wreck don't look at me.
> 
> This was inspired by two things, primarily: Harry Potter's "King's Cross Station" and the Gate of Truth from Fullmetal Alchemist. Those visuals are so powerful, and they match up with what I personally hope the afterlife will be like. 
> 
> Bart-Mush's art was also a powerful influence. Their drawings of Nat's final moments match up perfectly with how I imagined that scene when I was but a wee preteen with a broken heart. 
> 
> Also Monster's Inc, come to that. For sure inspired the door motif as well.
> 
> One thing it was NOT inspired by is The Good Place finale, for the very good reason that, when I started this fic two years ago I'd never heard of The Good Place. Now though? Well let's just say I'm thrilled that Mike Schur and I have the same taste in ideal afterlife. Cause he's GOOD.
> 
> Also there's a playlist? Now that you've read the fic once, go read it again while listening to this--> [https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1PeATAO4ChnGhj8RIOb8p2?si=pll2acpIT3aKY0qxSYPqNw](url)
> 
> It's good.
> 
> Huge thanks to @rat man from the Bartimaeus Sequence discord server for beta-ing this and indulging my deep meta ranting. Thank you!
> 
> Finally, PLEASE come talk to me about this. I have So. Much. to say about these characters I'm quite literally dying of it. And I hope you enjoyed~


End file.
